Is It Love or Is It Luck?
by ilovetvalot
Summary: Written for the Valentine's Day Gift Exchange on CCOAC for HansonFanGermany. A marriage proposal goes horribly wrong.


_**Author's Note: Thanks to everyone who has been patiently waiting for our stories to be posted. We appreciate your support and apologize for any delays. Real life, however, has taken precedence! We always want to be able to provide you with quality stories and chapters, so our postings may be a bit sporadic over the next month.**_

_**Please check out our most recent challenge on our forum – March Madness! The guidelines are simple: You suggest a pairing and choose a TV title from the list provided (shows are from the 70s, 80s, and 90s). We'll assign out the pairings & suggestions by March 4, and you have until March 31 to create just the perfect story based on the prompts you receive. Your final story does NOT have to be about the TV show prompt, but you do have to use the TV show title in the story somehow. Check out our forum, Chit Chat on Author's Corner, for details and to sign up…you can find a link on our profile pages.**_

_**As always, we do not own Criminal Minds or any of the characters that we so enjoy writing. If we did own them, we would have never had JJ leave!**_

___**Valentine's Day Gift Exchange Prompt: Rossi/JJ***Lucky (Caillat, Mraz); a walk in the moonlight, a proposal gone wrong, Valentine's Day (The Garry Marshall movie) written for HansonFanGermany.**_

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**Is It Love or Is It Luck?**

"No."

The single word reverberated on the moonlit stone terrace of David Rossi's cabin. Blinking, she could only stare at him with widened eyes as she tried to swallow, only to find her throat suddenly drier than the Sahara Desert.

What the hell had she been thinking? He was thrice married – and none of those unions had ended peacefully. She had a child - a lifelong responsibility...of course he would say no. Despite her hopes, this...this relationship had evidently not meant to him what it had to her. She'd been a fool.

And, she realized with a sinking heart, there wasn't any way to backtrack and pretend this hadn't happened.

Because it had. Oh, how this had happened.

She'd proposed marriage to David Rossi, and he'd said no. On Valentine's Day, no less.

Try as she might to think of a way, there was just no coming back from that. She'd been spurned on the one day that was supposed to guarantee love and all of its attending folderol.

As if to mock her, Jason Mraz sang in the background about being lucky in love, his unique voice filtering through the deck's speakers. Try that for irony.

"Jen, let me..."

Rising carefully from the table that she'd lovingly prepared with crystal and china that had once belonged to her grandmother, JJ shook her head. Pull it together, Jareau. Swallowing past the thickness clogging her throat, she smiled bravely in spite of the heaviness constricting her chest. "I think I need a minute before we continue this evening. I'm going to take a short walk. I'll be back in a minute," she said, turning and hurrying down the cobblestone path toward Dave's pond as fast as the moonlit night would allow her to go.

Tears burned her eyes as she heard his gruff voice call her name again, but she didn't dare stop. The last thing she was going to do was lose her composure in front of a man that had just quietly refused to marry her. She might not have much left after losing her heart to what she thought was a reformed man, but she did have her pride.

And she'd be damned if she let him take that, too.

XXXX

Watching her slim form moving away from him, David Rossi, romancer of women far and wide, cringed. Well, he couldn't have fucked that up more if he'd tried.

Scrubbing a hand down his face, he clenched the velvet box in his jeans pocket with his other hand in a punishing grip. Damn, damn, damn! Why the hell hadn't he just proposed at Christmas like he'd originally intended?

Of course, Henry's bout with the stomach flu on Christmas Eve had dampened festive spirits, both his and hers and especially his almost-son's...but hell, he could have made it work.

But instead, he'd opted to wait until a more intimate moment and he'd decided on Valentine's Day, clichés be damned. He never imagined JJ would beat him to the proverbial punch.

His denial hadn't been to her proposal. Not really. He was just a traditional man...and the idea of her having to ask him was as foreign a concept as Reid suddenly developing a taste for bed hopping. It just wasn't something he'd been prepared for.

And his fucking knee jerk reaction had sent her running.

At least she hadn't left. She was still on his land.

All he had to do now was convince her that he hadn't meant no, he wouldn't marry her, but instead, no, "I want to do the asking..."

Grabbing her thin wrap off the back of her chair, he set off after her, hoping his big mouth hadn't ruined the most important day of his life thus far.

XXXX

It only took a few minutes to reach her, her white dress contrasting starkly with the damp darkened ground. She sat forlornly on the cold earth, staring out over the inky water and his heart twisted as he realized that he was the idiot that had put that dejection in her posture. Striding toward her, he ordered, "Ask me again."

Jerking her head up at the sound of his voice, JJ cringed as she felt another stab through her heart. "Don't rub salt in the wound, Dave," she said softly as his hands wrapped her shawl around her shoulders. It was unseasonably warm for February, but there was still a chill in the air. To match the one now centered in her heart, she supposed darkly.

Dropping to the ground behind her, he wrapped her in his embrace, resting his chin on her stiffened shoulder. "Ask me again, Jennifer," he ordered gently as he tightened his arms around her reluctant body, pulling her closer.

"No," she said tightly, echoing his early denial.

"Lucky for me, I came prepared for denial," Dave murmured against her ear, reaching into his pocket and extracting the crushed velvet ring box, cracking it with his thumb before reaching around to show her the contents. "I came prepared with my own marriage proposal tonight."

Even in the dim moonlight, the brilliance of the ring was dazzling. "What?" JJ whispered huskily, her eyes unable to look away from the jewel in front of her, her befuddled brain slowly starting to clear.

"I wasn't saying no to your proposal, JJ," Dave rumbled against her ear. "Just that I wanted to do the proposing. I had it all planned out at Christmas and then..."

"The baby got sick," JJ recalled softly, closing her eyes briefly as she realized exactly where the conversation was heading.

Nodding against her shoulder, Dave murmured, "So I decided to wait until tonight. I wanted it to be memorable."

"It is," JJ agreed weakly, slowly relaxing in his arms. "I'm pretty certain I'll never forget being turned down," she noted with a watery smile.

"Only so I could do the proposing," Dave smiled against her neck, inhaling her unique and wonderful scent. "Chalk it up to my male ego and control freak tendencies," he added, pressing a warm kiss to her temple.

"So you do want to marry me?" JJ asked, releasing a shaky breath as she leaned heavier against his strong chest.

"Want is a mild word," Dave whispered against her ear, sliding the ring from the slot and dropping the box to the ground. Taking her left hand in his, he continued, "Jennifer Jareau, would you do me the extreme honor of becoming my wife?"

Blinking back tears, JJ held up her trembling hand, fingers splayed. "If you're sure..."

"I'm positive, Bella," Dave breathed, sliding the sparkling ring on her finger before linking their fingers. "I'm a lucky man."

"Luck had nothing to do with it," JJ whispered, her lips grazing his cheek as she turned to look at him with happy eyes. "This was all about love."

And it was. For the rest of their lives.

**Finis**

_**Dedicated to those far from home!**_


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